Listen

Sometimes, we wish he were pounding the table or stamping his foot. Yet at the end of the day, quiet and calm can sometimes speak louder. Listen.

LISTEN TO RACHEL ON MINNESOTA

This clip is longer, so if you don’t have time to watch the first six or eight minutes, here’s the executive summary: the Republicans seem to actually want to shut down the government (one hint: their enthusiastic chant, “shut it down! shut it down!”) and are now making budget negotiations contingent on things like restricting stem cell research (lest a blastocyst be harmed in pursuit of saving actual, fully formed adult lives).

Yikes.

More on our economic path tomorrow. Today, as New York’s adoption of marriage equality continues to reverberate . . .

DAVD FRUM: “I WAS WRONG ABOUT SAME-SEX MARRIAGE”

Conservative David Frum long opposed same-sex marriage – as some of your friends and relatives, especially the older ones, probably still do. It’s not a concept that gains near immediate enthusiastic acceptance as, say, color TV or “going to the moon” once did. Please forward his current thinking to those friends and relatives. It will be a sign of respect: that you respect their concerns and their willingness to consider new information, as David Frum did. (“The case against same-sex marriage has been tested against reality. The case has not passed its test.”) They might even reach the same conclusion.

. . . Any Congress with a real respect for personal freedom would repeal [The Defense of Marriage Act]. That, of course, does not describe the current Congress, where many members talk a great deal about freedom but apply it mainly to businesses and gun owners. . . .

GET RID OF MARRIAGE?

Peter Kaczowka: “We need to eliminate marriage. Marriage is a government subsidy program, a form of discrimination against single people. The state should not be in the business of blessing unions. I favor banning discrimination on the basis of marital status: no spousal Social Security benefits or tax breaks. I’d ask: gay or straight, should people be marrying for money, not love? Government marriage subsidies cloud the issue, reduce the commitment being made.”

☞ An interesting perspective, for sure. But I think we have more pressing problems than to try to reach consensus on this – and I don’t discredit the other side of the argument: namely, that society has an interest in encouraging committed relationships. Whereas I don’t see ANY valid “other side” to allowing all couples this legal status except gay ones.

At Guru’s suggestion – and only with money I can truly afford to lose – I am now the proud owner of TTNP at a bit more than $1.77 a share and of DVAX at a bit more than $2.77 a share, hoping for good news on one or both in the next little while. (Famous last words.)

Separately, selling one with a similar symbol, at about $2, that didn’t work out – DYAX, suggested almost two years ago, at $3.17.